Assessing Globally Networked Learning: Some Discoveries and First Steps

Darla Deardorff

Keynote Address

The Challenges of Collaborative Learning across the Border: Canada and the United States: Divergent Paths/Intertwined Futures

Claire Puccia Parham

Faculty who decide to teach international collaborative courses must negotiate a variety of challenges including cultural and language barriers, technological challenges, conflicting course goals and varying levels of student preparation. This presentation will outline how faculty members at Siena College and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada created and fostered an environment of collaboration in a Canadian/U.S. Relations course.

COIL Institute for Globally Networked Learning in the Humanities - A First Report from Spring 2012 Courses:

During 2011, COIL invited American university teams with international partners to apply to our Institute. 22 American higher education Institutions were accepted, working with 27 international partner universities. Eight globally networked courses that emerged from the Institute are underway this Spring semester (approximately seventeen more will be offered in Fall, 2012). Faculty and staff from a three of these international partnered teams will present their classroom experiences.

As a precursor to developing our Fall 2012 COIL course, San Jose State University (SJSU) initiated a virtual abroad course with Kwansei Gakuin University (KGU) in Japan, during Fall 2011. This presentation summarizes how the co-authors 1) developed international collaborators, 2) designed the course curriculum, 3) selected technologies to enhance the collaborative learning experience, 4) aligned assessment techniques related to COIL goals, 5) and kept our administrative sponsors informed and engaged through debriefings.

Creating a Global Classroom with Technology and Social Media in a time of Budget Restrictions

Aaron R. Zipp, Rutger Siebenga

This study will describe the challenges and benefits of online learning, international collaboration, and using social media in the classroom. Items of further discussion will pertain to the incredible beneficial transition from SKYPE to H.320 standard video conferencing standard, involvement of students as requirement versus experience with volunteerism, student friendship, cultivating student innovation through reasonable ambiguity, a quick comparison between student engaging in this collaboration and those who are not while completing the same project, and others. We will discuss hallmarks and limitations, getting started FAQs, and hopefully inspiring a discussion about the concept of faculty networking in this particular area of pedagogical evolution.

Education For Intercultural Citizenship: Breaking Boundaries and Building Bridges with other Cultures

Noureddine Mouhadjer

Our aim is building intercultural communicative competence elements into curriculum and classroom management practices so that teachers can help their students become interculturally competent. One way to do this is to consider ‘intercultural citizenship’ as a useful concept for relating national and international citizenship, where education has to take a wider perspective, involving engagement with people of other forms of life or cultures.

Empowering Faculty in the Globally-Networked Classroom

Jenifer Cushman, Ben Mallaby, Nathan Wagoner

Juniata College in Pennsylvania integrated a collaborative project with the University of Gloucestershire, England and University College Cork, Ireland into a Digital Video Production class. Cushman will provide an institutional overview including best practices to engage faculty, while Wagoner and Mallaby (through a video link) will discuss the project and class, drawing from session attendee experiences to share best practices.

The Expanding Globally Networked Landscape: Soliya, iEARN and INTENT

Catharine Bufalino, Ed Gragert, Mirjam Hauck, Francesca Helm

Many universities, NGO's and individual faculty members have developed successful globally networked courses, but it is often a battle for these courses to be taken seriously by those who underwrite student exchange and study abroad at the university and even more so by potential external funders. In response to this situation, initiatives are developing both in the US and in Europe. In the US, NGO's experienced in online student exchange have banded together to form "Exchange 2.0", to promote this format of discourse nationally and internationally. The European Erasmus Multilateral Project INTENT (Integrating Telecollaborative Networks into Foreign Language Higher Education) aims to raise greater awareness among students, educators and decision makers of telecollaboration as a tool for virtual mobility at the Higher Education (university) level and also on achieving more effective integration of telecollaboration in Higher Education Institutions.

Foreign Language Learning Support Centers as Community Open Way to Teach, Learn and Participate

Olga Tsiliuruk

GNL can bring about great challenge as to the process of the language education. This presentation will be of interest for foreign language teachers, learning design experts, administration staff of the educational institutions, business community representatives dealing with offering foreign language educational courses for the adults. Some practical aspects of the proposed novelty made possible through technological development in the educational field will be given in the individual presentation.

This workshop presents educational resources developed for the AAG’s Center for Global Geography Education (CGGE), a project funded by the National Science Foundation since 2003 to enhance the teaching of international perspectives on issues such as climate change, nationalism, and economic globalization. Participants will review strategies for using CGGE to build collaborative learning networks in different regions and countries.

Globally Networked Learning and Student Mobility: What is the Connection?Melanie Wilson

As colleges and universities look for ways to internationalize their campuses through initiatives such as study abroad, linking globally networked courses to these initiatives have presented unique challenges and opportunities. Ms. Wilson will open this panel discussion by presenting findings from an exploratory survey that suggests a link between globally networked courses and increased student mobility. Possible implications of this link will be presented, followed by the two other panelists who will share their unique instances where this connection is being enacted. The panel will conclude with a discussion of the implications of these cases and moderated Q/A.

Costa Rica Live is UGA’s means of bringing study abroad and international field research home to campus. The university maintains a study abroad/research station near Monteverde. There, students study a variety of fields, but the core discipline is ecology. Costa Rica Live allows students in large lecture sessions back in Athens to “hike,” observe, and learn alongside students and researchers in the cloud forest.

Designed to introduce basic intercultural communication theory and garner interest in studying abroad, this hybrid course features two correspondence modules linking students at Purchase College, SUNY with students abroad. The presentation will present the successes and specific challenges for students and faculty alike when there are multiple partners during a course.

Moving from Words to Actions: A Special Session on SUNY Networking Initiatives for Presidents, CAOs, SIOs

Mitch Leventhal, Jon Rubin, Carey Hatch

The session will focus on how the roll-out of UCosmic® and the expansion of COIL can lead to a rapid transformation in international opportunities for students and faculty. We will especially focus on how SUNY Global can assist your campus with implementation through programs such as COIL’s new Tier Two Institutional Support Program for campuses interested in expanding globally networked learning across their curricula.

New COIL Initiatives

Jon Rubin, John E. Fowler

Among COIL’s recent initiatives is the ongoing development of its new website as a go-to venue for finding and developing working relationships with international partners. Our site will also serve as a hub for sharing experiences and best practices among individuals at SUNY and beyond who are engaged in the burgeoning Globally Networked Learning field. We will also discuss the recent expansion of COIL’s Nodal Network of SUNY campuses, and our new Tier Two program for institutions wishing to utilize COIL’s expertise to support them in integrating our model into their internationalization plan.

The NewsActivist Curriculum and Website: At the Nexus of Local and Global Collaborative Learning

Gabriel Flacks

Blogging can provide students an exciting and engaging way to develop knowledge about the world, yet the task requires certain conditions to meet pedagogic goals. This presentation will describe some of the activities and features of the NewsActivist curriculum and associated free website that have led students to improve writing skills and critical thinking skills while developing civic awareness.

Presenters will discuss using multiple platforms to manage small group discussion in a linked course with 2 sites in the US and 1 in the Middle East, and include collaborative course content, new desktop vidyoconference technology, sharing multiple platforms, including Wikispaces for photography and storytelling assignments. Presentation will include collaborative challenges as well as new technolgies making hybrid elearning possible.

Telecollaboration and Language Learning (Part 1)

Mirjam Hauck

Mirjam Hauck's contribution will explore the role of e-literacy skills development and its relevance for learning and teaching languages and cultures online, multimodal communicative competence training in particular. She will draw on insights gained during two collaborative online studies with language learners and trainee teachers from the College of Modern Foreign Languages, Czestochowa/Poland, Teachers' College, Columbia University/NY, Paedagogische Hochschule, Heidelberg/Germany, and the Department of Modern Languages, Open University/UK.

Telecollaboration and Language Learning (Part 2)

Tita Beaven

Tita Beaven's contribution will focus on issues around development of intercultural and plurilingual skills in relation to a four way telecollaborative writing project in which learners from four different countries and institutions worked together to produce articles for the Vivre en Aquitaine website (www.uk.aquitaine.fr). The development of plurinlingual skills is used to illustrate how learning design emerged during the project, and to discuss what happens when partners do not necessarily share the same pedagogic approaches or work in comparable contexts.

Telecollaboration and Language Learning (Part 2)

Sarah Guth

Sarah Guth will focus on issues of power and equality between participants and learner identity in online intercultural exchange by looking at the role played by three factors: choice of language, choice of discussion topic and participants’ geographical location. To do this she will draw from data gathered during two exchanges she has carried out using English as a Lingua Franca. In one, Bochum-Padova, all students were non-native speakers of English with different levels of competence whereas in the other, Soliya, some members were native speakers while the majority was not.

The presentation reflects on the experience of teaching a Turkish-American relations course between SUNY New Paltz and Sehir University in Turkey. An analysis of cultural, ideological and political discussions that developed between students around the broader foreign policy issues in the Middle East is offered. The presentation examines the ways in which cross-cultural communications could be improved through better use of technology and preparation on the part of the teacher, especially emphasizing the student to student interactions.

Using Cloud Computing to Connect Culturally Diverse Classrooms in a Blended Learning Environment

Lorette Pellettiere Calix and Patrice Torcivia Prusko

This presentation will highlight the ways in which a blended learning program in Panama uses cloud computing to engage students, increase persistence, and connect across cultures. We will share and reflect with participants on some of the innovative methods used to bridge distance and cultural differences and keep students engaged, especially during the online portion of their course.

Voicethread: Enhancing Discussions From Any Distance

Tamara Cupples, Eileen Karp, Jeffrey Riman

In this panel, the presenters will provide an overview of how Voicethread can be used to add visual and audio impact to global online discussions. The potential and logistics of Voicethread, including how it works asynchronously to allow users to get to know each other’s voices and commentary while viewing close-up images and text, will be examined.

What do new cloud-based Learning Management Systems mean for the future of Globally Networked Learning?

John Fontaine, Adrian Sannier, Jared Stein, Takashi "Take" Takekawa

Over the past year, new cloud-based LMS's have been released that in some cases, allow individual faculty members to launch a course for free, thereby providing flexibility for faculty exploring globally networked learning at campuses where the campus LMS is tied to registered students. Some of these new LMS's are also very mobile device friendly, making them easier for students to access, more often. The developers of Blackboard (CourseSites), Instructure (Canvas), manaba, and Pearson (OpenClass) will join us to demonstrate their LMS, to provide case studies of their use in globally networked courses, and to participate with us in a discussion about the future of these tools.